Category: technology

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This Is Why Your Phone Struggles for Service on Airport Tarmacs

One thing is certain when you’re on the tarmac: your cell phone service sucks. Unfortunately for passengers sending a “taking off” or “just landed” text from the airport tarmac, the message never seems to reach its destination in a timely fashion.

From a logical perspective, perhaps being trapped inside a sealed metal plane explains why your cell phone struggles for service worse than me trying to make a decision at the buffet. It turns out you can blame the structural design of both airports and planes for the terribly slow service on the tarmac.

Christopher Schaberg, a writer for The Atlantic, spoke to three commercial pilots who fly for major airlines like Delta and British Airways in order to discover the secret behind the slow cell service on airport tarmacs. The professor at Loyola University of New Orleans discovered that cellular antennae often do not provide sufficient coverage to span the entire distance of an airport, including the tarmac.

Airports utilize distributed antenna systems that work best indoors. Unfortunately for travelers (and even pilots), those antennae really only work inside the terminal. That lack of capacity combined with the plane’s materials—which are obviously designed for structural integrity rather than connectivity—means that anyone sitting in the tarmac has a better chance of winning the lottery than refreshing their Instagram feed in a timely fashion.

And if your flight gets delayed, the connection conundrum only gets worse.

To avoid the painful boredom of sitting in the cabin with nothing to do, try downloading some content before boarding your flight. Having a few episodes of your favorite show stored in your downloads will come in handy to pass the time, especially if weather or technical issues cause a delay.

Believe me, bing-watching a few episodes of Breaking Bad is far better than thumbing through the safety evacuation manual.

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These Jobs Probably Won’t Exist in 20 Years

The world is changing very rapidly. There are countless jobs out there that weren’t even on people’s radars 20 years ago, but what jobs today might be obsolete themselves 20 years in the future?

These 15 Redditors have some ideas!

15. What’s that job called again?

Hopefully, that job where that dude stands in the men’s room of a bar and squirts soap into your hands, and hands you a paper towel, expecting a tip. I don’t hate the guy who does that job, but I loathe the fact that that job exists and that I’m forced to choose between wasting money, looking like a jerk and stiffing the guy, or taking the loophole and not washing my hands.

14. Except for Family Video…

Video store employees.

13. Never mind the papers themselves.

It’s me again, just lonely here, thinking bout the paperboy, wondering when he’s gonna bring me some good news

12. What about Facebook, though?

Any job related to Facebook.

11. Selling things over the phone at all?

My current job may not exist in 5 years, so I am not sure that counts.

I sell reference titles over the phone, specifically print reference titles. I suspect that with the current flow of technology this company may only be around for another 3 – 5 years.

10. The sticker-slapper.

Ever watch “How’s Its Made” and there’s this complicated ass machine literally piecing together and building some kind of complicated product. There are arms grabbing, and lasers cutting, belts moving things, and just miracle after miracle of modern automation. Then there’s this dude who moves the finished product into a box and slaps a label on. And the viewer wonders why the fuck did they need a person to do that lousy step? That job doesn’t stand a chance.

9. They even charge you to do it yourself, so.

That asshole you have to wait a week for from the cable company just to plug in a box for an exorbitant fee.

Edit: everyone… tell me how much this bums you out…

rubs nipples

8. Pretty sure this is already happening.

BlackBerry tech support.

7. I like your hope and optimism.

I hope jobs in general won’t exist in 10-20 years. Wall-E.

Edit: Oh my…what have I started.

6. No one to kill you (at least on the ride home).

Taxi Drivers. Hopefully in 20 years autonomous cars will mean we can go to the pub, get drunk and drive home safely. The computerised cars might have to be programmed to understand slurred words and mistyped commands though!

5. At least you’re aware.

Mine. I am a switchboard operator, a dying breed.

4. They’re already down to like, 1 real person an exit.

Toll Collectors.

3. Do you want to trust a remote control with your life, though?

Train Engineers. My father is one and complains about the newer remote controlled trains taking jobs every day.

2. As we know them, anyway.

Weed dealers will become obsolete quite soon.

EDIT: Weed dealers as we currently know them will be obsolete. They’ll be forever more convenient and less sketchy.

1. Fingers crossed for this one to miss the list.

I’m really sad to say this – but I hope that libraries are still operational in 10-20 years. Maybe bookstores too.

I think that while everybody says, ‘no way, books will be around forever, blablabla’ there is also the fact that libraries run on public funding and there has been legislation that continuously cuts hours and shuts down libraries.

Do you have anything to add? Agree? Disagree?

Tell us what you think in the comments!

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A Terminally Ill Scientist Wants to Turn Himself Into a Cyborg Before He Passes Away

We sometimes joke from time to time about robot uprisings, the day when technology becomes too much for humanity to handle, or how we might be able to use it to be able to “live” forever. There have been countless television and movies that have explored those ideas (and associated fears) over the years – but now one scientist thinks he could actually live forever via tech.

Or at least become part robot.

Dr. Peter Bowman Scott-Morgan is a roboticist who has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). It’s a degenerative condition, also known as Lou Gehrig’s. It has few treatment options and no cure, so Scott-Morgan decided to work toward becoming the “world’s first full cyborg.”

Image Credit: Twitter

After undergoing four medical procedures in an attempt to prolong and improve the quality of his life, he refers to himself as Peter 2.0.

Peter has a feeding tube that goes directly into his stomach, a catheter that goes directly into his bladder, a colostomy bag into his colon, and he also underwent a laryngectomy to remove is larynx, which connects his mouth and nose to his lungs.

He’s not able to speak with a natural voice and can breathe only with a respirator, but it also takes away the risk of  saliva accumulating into his lungs, which would basically cause him to drown.

He tweeted after coming home from the hospital the last time.

“Just home from 24 days in Intensive Care. All medical procedures now complete and a huge success. My mini-ventilator keeping me breathing is a LOT quieter than Darth Vader’s. All speech is synthetic but at last sounds like me again. Long research road ahead but in great spirits.”

Scott-Morgan writes on his website that he’s working on the “experiment of this life,” and plans to use his robotics knowledge to not only survive, but to thrive with a disease that spells the end for everyone who gets handed the diagnosis – over 220,000 people around the world.

In addition to the surgeries, he’s made big upgrades to his wheelchair that make it easier to move around his home, and will undergo laser eye surgery so that he can better read and control the computer screen using only his eyes – because in time, he won’t be able to control any of the other muscles in his body.

You can catch a documentary detailing his journey into becoming Peter 2.0 in 2020.

And for now, Peter is living happily in Devonshire with his husband, Francis.

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An 8-Year-Old Boy With a Multi-Million Dollar Income Was Named the Highest-Earning YouTuber of 2019

Well, this is depressing…

How much money did you make in 2019? This 8-year-old kid on YouTube probably out-earned you.

In fact, he out-earned almost everyone.

Ryan Kaji earned a stunning $26 million on YouTube in 2019, making him the highest-earning YouTuber in the world. Ryan started his channel, Ryan’s World (formerly Ryan ToysReview), when he was just 3 years old. It consists of toy reviews, science experiments, educational videos, playing games, and more.

This is the second year in a row that Ryan has been the highest-earning YouTuber, beating other popular YouTube celebrities like PewDiePie and Jeffree Star. His income last year was $22 million.

Ryan’s YouTube fame has also evolved into other, more traditional show business deals, like a preschool-aimed series on Nickelodeon and a deal with Hulu.

Unsurprisingly, Ryan’s impressive year is causing a lot of jealousy on social media.

“I hate my life,” one person wrote.

“I need a YouTube channel,” another said.

“I might fuck around and start reviewing toys,” another joked.

Life isn’t quite that simple for this 8-year-old millionaire, though. Earlier this year, Ryan’s channel was the subject of a complaint filed to the Federal Trade Commission. A nonprofit called Truth In Advertising (TINA) claimed that the channel “deceptively promotes a multitude of products to millions of preschool-aged children in violation of FTC law.”

“When a YouTube video directed to children under the age of 5 mixes advertising with program content, as Ryan ToysReview videos frequently do, the preschool audience is unable to understand or even identify the difference between marketing material and organic content, even when there is a verbal indicator that attempts to identify the marketing content,” TINA Executive Director Bonnie Patten and Legal Director Laura Smith wrote in their complaint.

Ryan’s dad says their family strictly adheres to YouTube’s terms of service and cares about their viewers’ safety.

Something else to consider: Ryan is eight. So does he understand?

Who knows?

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Stars Are Disappearing and Scientists Aren’t Ruling out Aliens as a Cause

There have been a few stories lately when scientists and other suit-and-tie types have been unwilling to say aliens aren’t behind one thing or another – which I guess is the safest course, because no one likes to be proven wrong.

I mean, if a situation actually arose in which aliens were discovered, I doubt people would be running around pointing fingers at all of the folks who said aliens were a fantasy. But what do I know.

…But back to the story at hand, and the hundred-plus stars that have disappeared from the map.

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Yes, it turns out that the night sky, which has remained static enough to guide seamen and pirates and explorers for eons, is changing.

The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations Project (VASCO) compares 70-year-old surveys with recent images of the night sky to document what has changed, and after years of painstaking work (there are a lot of stars, after all), they’ve published their results in the Astronomical Journal.

The 100-odd stars that were documented to have disappeared could represent short-lived flashes in the night, or they could be actual stars that disappeared.

The researchers hope their results, and results to come, will be relevant to astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

“VASCO is a project that is both a SETI project and a conventional astrophysics project,” explained Beatriz Villarroel, a researcher at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics and one of the report’s coauthor. “Even if we do SETI and have SETI questions, we are also interested in publishing other results that we find along the way.”

The disappeared pinpricks of light are curious because when stars die, their last burst of glory is usually hard to miss – people saw and wrote about them long before there were telescopes – so if they can also just wink out without fanfare, well, we want to know why.

And to that end, some of the researchers don’t think we should rule out something like another advanced civilization blocking stars with their solar panels to gather energy.

For her part, Villarroel is on board.

“If we should look for aliens, maybe we should actually look for something that would be truly absurd to find.”

The research is being conducted by a team of 20 astronomers and astrophysicists who have compared 70 years worth of sky images taken by the US Naval Observatory and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System.

They used software to analyze 600 million light sources that should have appeared in the earliest and most recent sets of data. At first,  the number of potential missing stars numbered around 150,000, but was winnowed down to 24,000 after some additional cross-referencing.

In the end, Villarroel is confident the 100 stars they presented are, indeed, missing.

“We have done the best work to remove anything that resembles any artifacts.”

If they are – or were – brief flashes that just happened to show up on the old US Navy surveys, they were likely red dwarf flares, variable stars that dimmed, or the afterglow of a gamma ray burst.

If they really were enduring light sources that disappeared without fanfare, Villarroel – and others – would be much more excited. SETI enthusiasts have speculated about how alien civilizations with advanced engineering power could shield a star from view.”You would have to exclude all-natural things, and then there might also be new natural phenomena that we don’t know about can be more exciting.”

If this is totally blowing your skirt up, the scientists at VASCO plan to implement a citizen science project that lets civilians help search through the rest of the 150,000 candidates.

You know you want to be the one who discovers the spot where technologically advanced aliens are hiding….

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You Might Need This ‘Nap Desk’ in Your Life If You Want to Be More Productive

George Constanza was right…about napping during working hours, that is.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to hit the wall in the middle of the workday. I have a TON of energy from about 8 A.M. to about 2 P.M. and then…uh oh…this guy gets a little sleepy, and it’s time for a 30-minute snoozer. Well, it turns out I’m not alone, and maybe I shouldn’t even feel guilty about that mid-day nap!

That’s why you might want to consider picking up this nap desk that allows you to slumber peacefully below your desk so you don’t have to go far to get those ZZZZZZZs in.

The desk comes to us from folks at the architecture and design firm Studio NL in Greece, and it is pretty impressive. The sleeping quarters are snuggled conveniently underneath the desk where a worker slaves away, so you’d be able to just kick off your shoes, put on your sleeping mask, and start counting sheep.

Although we have a hard-working attitude here in the U.S. for which downtime is frowned upon by many, relaxing and refueling are very important to well-being.

But if you’re one of the naysayers who think that napping is bad or counterproductive, many studies have shown that naps can actually make you more productive: they can “increase alertness in the period directly following the nap and may extend alertness a few hours later in the day.”

Sign me up! I’m ready for this! How about you?

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Samuel L. Jackson’s Voice Has Arrived on Alexa. With Profanity and All…

I live in an Alexa household, even though we’re well aware we’ve invited the government and big business and probably more eyes and ears into our homes. It just makes it so easy to add things to the grocery list, turn the lights off and on (because who wants to stand up?), play music, and on and on.

Even so, I’ll be the first person to say that Alexa’s voice can quickly go from pleasant to annoying, depending on one’s mood.

Do you know whose melodious voice is always welcome, though?

One Samuel L. Jackson.

And now, he can be the voice turning your lights on and adding stuff to your shopping list.

The Guardian is reporting that Amazon has confirmed they will be using neural text-to-speech technology to mimic Jackson’s voice, so it won’t just be pre-recorded phrases – Jackson can do anything from read you the weather to sing you Happy Birthday.

He won’t be able to help with your shopping, reminders, lists, or other Alexa Skills. Womp-womp.

This is all with Samuel L. Jackson’s approval, of course, and you’re certainly aware that the award-winning actor is as famous for his blue language as his performance skills – which is why Alexa is going to allow you to set your device to allow him to swear appropriately in his responses.

Which you know, is just a win for everyone involved, really.

You’ll be able to download the technology for just $.99 to start, but if you want to keep it forever, eventually you’ll have to pay $4.99.

If you’re someone like my sister, who gets prissy about profanity, don’t worry – Amazon promises that deals with other celebrities are in the works, and before long “Alexa” could be just about anyone you like.

Which is a little terrifying.

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This Is Why Dice Are a Lot Better Than Computers at Generating Truly Random Numbers

We have a lot of ways to do things at random: roll a die, flip a coin, pick a number – but one thing that actually doesn’t work so well: computers. Computers struggle to truly be random, even when they’re programmed to do exactly that.

You’ve probably noticed that even if you have thousands of songs on your phone, your shuffle function will “randomly” choose some songs more often than others.

The reason? Your computer follows an algorithm, which is essentially a list of instructions they use to carry out a task. They don’t know how to deviate from the set path (when they figure that out, the robot revolution will be upon us).

So, while engineers have come up with some ways to write algorithms that help computers pretend to generate random numbers, when it comes down to it, they really can’t be truly random because they are following instructions that lead them to their outcome.

The best we can do is a pseudo-random number generator, which honestly, is good enough to fool anyone who isn’t a computer programmer. But if you had the coding skills, you could, say, figure out the randomness behind an online poker program and make some serious cash.

True random number generators use physical phenomena akin to rolling a die – things like radioactive decay, background noise, or even the amount of time between your keystrokes. But again, we can’t even really call them truly random, since they’re still following an algorithm that has the physical phenomenon at its root.

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Which means I’m going to just keep rolling a dice for my numbers.

Not that I often need truly random numbers anyway…

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These Are the 20 Worst Passwords You Can Choose

You’ve probably realized that having strong passwords is one of the best things you can do to protect your identity, your money, and your privacy in general (if you have trouble remembering a lot of different passwords, get a password manager).

Or at least, I hope you have – because there are still a disturbing number of people using “password” as their password like, everywhere.

Yeah, even at their banks and stuff.

Along with that one, here are 20 of the easiest-to-guess, least secure passwords you could choose.

So…don’t.

20. welcome

Yes, welcome to my credit card.

19. 7777777

Random number, they’ll never guess seven!

18. lovely

This is just random.

17. 555555

Another number over and over, yes, secure.

16. 654321

Oooh backwards counting!

15. qwertyuiop

This made me giggle.

14. admin

Talk about phoning it in.

13. 1q2w3e4r

I mean, at least you pretended to try.

12. qwerty123

They’ll never try a combination!

11. abc123

Aw, look at you being all tricksy like.

10. 123123

Who do you think you’re kidding?

9. 111111

They’ll never guess this one!!

8. iloveyou

That’s sweet. Let me take all of your money.

7. 12345

Isn’t 6 characters like some kind of minimum?

6. 12345678

You guys, please stop.

5. 1234567

No seriously, stop.

4. password

Yep, still on the list. I told you.

3. qwerty

This one makes me laugh. People are dumb.

2. 123456789

At least it’s long?

1. 123456

Yes, really.

 

I’m guilty of using variations of the same passwords for years on end, but none nearly as bad as these! Yeesh!

Are you guilty? Go ahead and out yourself in the comments!

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Hybrid Pig-Monkeys Could Be in Our (Near) Future Thanks to Chinese Genetic Experiments

There’s a classic episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is convinced that he’s seen a “pig man” at the hospital – a result of a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong…or right, I suppose.

And while there’s no pig man in the episode, if scientists have their way, the show is probably going to be seen as prophetic one day.

In yet another show of disregard for ethics in experimental genetics, Chinese researchers have brought pig-monkey chimeras to term.

In science (as opposed to mythology), a chimera is an organism derived from two or more zygotes. At the Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in China, piglets were injected with monkey stem cells when they were fetuses and, for the first time in any lab ever, were brought successfully to term.

They look like regular pigs, for the record, and scientists claim they exist to further the research into growing human organs inside of animals.

The embryonic monkey stem cells came from cynomolgus monkeys, a type of macaque commonly bred for biomedical research. The cells were modified to produce a protein called GFP that would allow researchers to track the cells after injection.

Pigs, for their part, are often used as hosts because of their biological similarities to humans.

The team implanted the cells into more than 4,000 pig embryos, but only 2 of the 10 altered babies were born with monkey stem cells showing up in their heart, liver, spleen, lung, and skin.

Every one of the litter of 10 died within a week of birth from an unknown cause, but as both chimera and typical pigs perished, researchers believe it had to do with the IVF process and not the altered stem cells.

“We believe this work will facilitate future developments in xenogeneic organogenesis, bringing us one step closer to producing tissue-specific functional cells and organs in a large animal model through interspecies blastocyst complementation,” write the authors.

Xenogenesis is the process by which scientists believe we’ll one day be able to generate human organs inside other mammals to be used for transplantation, and it has been moderately successful in mice thus far. Studies on pigs and other more advanced mammals have been halted in Western medicine due to ethical concerns.

Scientists in China aren’t deterred, though, and say they will continue to attempt to create healthy animals with a higher proportion of monkey cells, then continue to creating pigs with organs comprised of almost all primate cells, if they’re successful.

It’s a brave new world. At least the pigs are going first.

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